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Condemnation: The expression of strong disapproval
Indoctrination: The process of teaching a person or a group to change and accept other beliefs
Radicalization: The process of causing someone to have a position on political or social issues
Waterboarding: A torture technique used to simulate the experience of drowning

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February 10
ADELAIDE, Australia - Alfiraa Dilshat and Rashida Abdughufur were picnicking in the small seaside town of Victor Harbor in late December when Abdughufur got a video call from her mother.

With Abdughufur living in Adelaide, a city in southern Australia, and her mother in the Xinjiang region of China, it was a rare chance for the two to connect. At first, Abdughufur said, she was excited because she hadn't talked to her mother in a long time.

Then came "disaster."

Abdughufur's mother appeared on the screen in handcuffs, sitting next to a police officer. "They started interrogating me," Abdughufur said. Fearing for her safety, she complied, sharing sensitive details and documents the police demanded from her, including her Australian driver's license.

When Abdughufur finished the call, "her face was pale," her friend Dilshat remembered. Shortly thereafter, an audio message from Abdughufur's mother arrived. "These people will look for you," it said. The WeChat account used to contact Abdughufur was disconnected soon after. Abdughufur hasn't heard from her mother since.

This was the kind of danger that she and other Uighurs had hoped to escape. In the past few years, China has conducted a sweeping campaign to suppress Uighur identity and restrict the practice of Islam. As many as 1 million Uighurs and members of other minority groups - mostly Muslim ones - are being held without charges in brutal internment camps, according to the United Nations. It is just the latest episode in a decades-long history of tension between Uighurs and the staunchly secular, Han Chinese-dominated government in Beijing.

Abdughufur herself fled Xinjiang in 2017, when China intensified its crackdown. Shortly after moving to Australia, her younger brother and father were sent to internment camps.

After months of denying the camps existed, China switched last year to justifying them. Beijing insists it is merely providing job training and "de-extremism education" in a region that is poor and steeped in fundamentalism. "As a result of the vocational education and training, the social environment of Xinjiang has seen notable changes, with a healthy atmosphere on the rise and improper practices declining," said Shohrat Zakir, the de facto No. 2 official in Xinjiang, in October.

The Chinese embassy in Australia did not respond to requests for comment.
[The cone of silence around China's Muslim 'gulags']
On Friday, Uighurs across Australia rallied in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide to highlight the plight of their communities in China, but also to protest against their treatment by Beijing abroad.

Uighurs in Adelaide said efforts to infiltrate their community go back more than a decade. One man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still has family in China, said that during a visit to China in 2005, he was offered what was then an average wage in Australia if he agreed to spy on his community. Another woman, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her family, said she was approached with a similar request as recently as 2011.

Open intimidation on Australian soil is a much more recent concern. It has taken the form of WeChat messages or phone calls, often from individuals claiming to be Chinese officials. They may ask for a call back regarding passport or visa matters, or claim a package has arrived at the embassy for the person they are calling; many of them demand sensitive personal information that Uighurs believe Chinese authorities would already have because of prior visa requests.

That pattern, said Michael Clarke, who researches the treatment of Uighurs at Australia's National Security College, is "consistent, not just with incidents in Australia, but also in other places around the world."

Some researchers caution that there is no statistical evidence of such tactics, but Uighur community leaders say complaints about calls, messages and video chats have proliferated as Adelaide's Uighurs have become more politically active over the last two years. Uighurs say the calls began in March, just hours after the community staged its largest-ever protest in Canberra, Australia's capital, to highlight the plight of China's Uighurs.

"After the protest in Canberra, even young kids who were born here got the phone calls," said 37-year-old Adam Turan, who said his 80-year-old father died weeks after being released from an internment camp in Xinjiang in the fall.

A spokesman for Australia's Department of Home Affairs told The Post that "the Australian Government takes seriously its responsibility to protect our sovereignty, values and national interests from foreign interference" and highlighted the passage of a stringent new espionage and foreign interference law last year.

The calls and messages have taken a heavy toll. The tightknit Adelaide Uighur community of about 170 families has watched helplessly as an increasing number of their relatives in China have been taken to the internment camps. Many think their activism has led to such imprisonments - and, in some cases, deaths. The community's growth has also trickled to a standstill as leaving China has become harder and harder for Uighurs.

"Because we live here, they suffer," Turan said. As he sat in a Uighur restaurant in central Adelaide and recalled his own father's death, he was interrupted by the restaurant's owner, who approached the table to share details about his own family's disappearance.

All of the Uighurs interviewed for this report said they had experienced depression or anxiety following the detention of their relatives and continuing harassment. "Sometimes I want to kill myself," said Almas Nizamidin, 28, a construction worker who says his wife is being detained in a Chinese internment camp and who has lobbied Australian lawmakers unsuccessfully to raise the issue with Chinese officials.

"We all have psychological issues here," Turan agreed. "At work, I try not to cry."

For him, the questions he used to fear most began early in the morning, at the breakfast table with his children. "Do you have parents?" his 5-year-old son repeatedly asked. "Why are they not here?"

"Even the children go through this trauma," Turan said. "That's the hardest part."

China is Australia's biggest export market, putting Canberra in an awkward position. Australia's government is a vocal critic of the treatment of Uighurs; it joined the United States as recently as November in calling on China to close its camps. But Nurmuhammad Said Majid, the president of the East Turkistan Australian Association ("East Turkistan" is the term used by Uighurs to describe Xinjiang), believes that Australia's increasing dependence on China has made it made it more difficult for his community to have their complaints heard.

"We're paying a heavy price for what we do here," Majid said.

While sitting for an interview at Southern Australia's State Library in Adelaide, Majid noticed red lanterns outside the library, announcing a new exhibition on ancient China. Such exhibitions and other intercultural exchanges have become more frequent in recent years, despite Australia's criticisms of China's human rights record.

"When I see those lanterns," Majid said, pointing to them, "I see the blood of our families."
This story has been updated with comments from the Australian Department of Home Affairs.

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Uighurs fled persecution in China. Now Beijing's harassment has followed them to Australia.

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February 10 ADELAIDE, Australia - Alfiraa Dilshat and Rashida Abdughufur were picnicking in the small seaside town of Victor Harbor in late December when Abdughufur got a video call from her mother. With Abdughufur living in Adelaide, a city in southern Australia, and her mother in the Xinjiang region of China, it was a rare chance for the two to connect.

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The final stage of genocide is denial. The Chinese government continuously makes claims that justify the existence of concentration camps in Xinjiang. For instance, they state that these camps are job related and are training to fight against extremism. Ironically, the Chinese government also claims that Uighurs are being detained in "reeducation centers" due to them being extremists, which contradicts with their other claim about teaching Uighurs how to fight against extremism. The government also claims to be teaching Uighurs useful and valuable skills for combat. Another statement the Chinese government states about why these concentration camps are needed is because they feel it is necessary to detain all Uighur minorities in this camps to get rid of extremism and separatist groups. These camps were supposedly created due to politics and that the condemnation is simply political. The "employment" or "training centers," as these concentration camps are called by Chinese authorities, were originally denied by the Chinese government to exist in Xinjiang, but after being confronted directly by the United Nations, the existence of these camps were confirmed. However, these camps were said to be for assisting and educating minor criminals and that these camps were lawful and harmless. One final thing that the Chinese government did to deny the true reason behind these camps was by justifying all of the harsh policies, including laws and bans, made against Uighurs by claiming that they are necessary to counter religious radicalization and extremism.

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We are not aware of extermination because the government is denying that the laws they have made and the actions they are going through with are harming Uighurs.

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China's plan was to "de-extremify" Uighurs, meaning that they would change them from extremists to non-extremists as the Chinese government believes Uighurs are extremists. They combine hard labor with indoctrination in these "re-education centers." In 2014, these camps began to be dedicated to hard labor rather than indoctrination. Around this time, there were a series of terrorist attacks the Chinese government blamed on Uighur separatists. Their strategy for controlling Uighurs is to keep them in China and to not drive them out. To achieve this, the Chinese government has created many laws against Uighurs taking away many of their rights. China's ultimate goal is to target the cultural practices and the cultural beliefs of Muslim groups.

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In China, a communist country, they strive to create stricter laws that are general to the people and not just Muslims themselves. Therefore this Genocide is based on the fact that doing this ethnic cleansing they will create a better country and easier country to run. China also has long feared that Uighur's will attempt to establish their own national homeland in Xinjiang and saying that this is a necessary step in stopping that from happening. The re-education centers where starting to be built in 2014. Since 2014, many more camps have been built.

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The Chinese government began to spread hateful propaganda towards the Uighurs with messages such as the Uighurs were enemies of the government and traitors of society. They believed that religion was "backwards superstition" and everyone who believed in religion was "mentally ill". They created and enforced laws that went against the Uighurs religion, Islam, such as forbidding Muslims to fast during Ramadan, an important time in the Muslim community, forcing the Uighurs to eat pork, something forbidden in Islam, and they shaved Uighurs long beards. They also passed laws saying that the Uighurs could not practice their religion. The government did everything they could to make sure the Uighurs were less dominant and used intimidation to persuade others to believe that the government was doing good for the people and the Uighurs were just "mentally unstable."

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All genocides are organized. This has not been named a genocide yet, but the Chinese government is still very organized in what they are doing. First of all, the government has increased the surveillance of the minority population. This was mainly brought when Chen Quanguo became the Community Party Secretary of the region. The police have also made a gird management system to monitor all areas of the region. The government then made security checkpoints at train stations where they used facial recognition technology and  Chinese officials have justified these policies as necessary to counter religious radicalization and extremism. They have continually implemented repressive policies to curb religious freedom and authorities have recruited over 90,00 officials over 2016-2017. The government has laid out as many as 7,300 heavily guarder security checkpoints throughout the region. The Chinese have used authorities in every which way possible to keep track of the Uighurs at all times.

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The Chinese government began to dehumanize Uighur Muslims when they introduced what they like to call "reeducation centers," better known as concentration camps. As of November 2018, at least one million Uighurs are being detained in these camps. In these camps, Uighurs are forced to undergo "psychological indoctrination programs," or psychological teachings to change their beliefs. They also must thank the Chinese president Xi Jinping and they must study communist propaganda. In these concentration camps, Chinese authorities use many inhumane ways on torture on Uighurs, such as waterboarding. The Chinese government stripped Uighurs from many of their rights to show how worthless they are in the country's society.

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This is one of the most important steps that starts the stripping of human rights. The Chinese government has begun to use law and political power to take away rights of Uighur Muslims in 2017. Some examples of this are when the Chinese banned certain baby names that they thought were "inappropriate." The police also confiscated their phones and took the information on them to use for later purposes. They also confiscated their passports so Uighurs cannot travel abroad, made it illegal for Uighurs to watch state television, and started to promote drinking and smoking. The government prohibited young children from not attending government schools. These are all "new laws" that are stripping their human rights. The Uighurs are considered citizens of China because the government does not want them to travel outside of China.

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The Chinese government is not calling the Uighurs anything but Muslims and Uighurs. They did however ban certain Muslim names for newborns. Uighurs might be referred to as the "bad people" who are promoting extremism

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The part of China named XinJiang, originally named East Turkestan, is mostly Muslims and those Muslims call themselves the Uighur's. These Uighur are hated by the Zhang and the rest of the communist party for the only reason of because they are Uighur's. Though the Chinese government doesn't like the Uighur's they are not considered as bipolar societies, like other genocides like the Hutu's and the Tootsies.

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China's government believes that religion is a "mental illness" or "backwards superstition." They spread the message that Uighurs must be "diluted" because they are "evil." They also believe that Uighurs are the source of China's problems, and getting rid of them will solve everything. China is also fearful that Uighurs will attempt to create their own homeland in Xinjiang.

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This is all currently happening in Xinjiang, China's biggest region. The region used to be referred to as East Turkestan, a term that is no longer used due to it being forbidden to be said.

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The Uighur discrimination (the "re-education" centers, the laws, etc.) began in 2009. In 2012, the word "de-extremeification" rose as a way for the Chinese government to justify their actions. Since 2014, things have just gotten progressively worse. As of 2018, the concentration camps have doubled in size since they were first established. This is still going on today and has not been named a genocide.

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Uighurs are being sent to "re-education" camps where hundreds of thousands of Uighurs are being detained. Uighurs are being tortured, sleep deprived, and forced into military discipline at these camps. The government denies everything and the camps are said to be "training" camps. We currently have no idea if any mass slaughters are happening. It also has not been declared a genocide yet.

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The Uighurs are currently being targeted in Xinjiang. Most of the Uighurs practice Sunni Islam. There are about 11 million Uighurs in Western China.